Monique Henderson (Relay/400 meters)

Head Coach Sue Enquist ’80, a member of UCLA’s first national championship team in 1978, was pleased that it was an all-Pac-10 final and lauded the talent of the entire conference. After the game, she lavished praise upon her own team, saying, “It’s hard to package the emotion, knowing this season had so many wonderful journeys. … We had to believe, had to be resilient, had to be able to separate our offense and defense. … I’m so extremely proud of this team because they never stopped believing.”

The NCAA title won by the softball team was UCLA’s third championship of the 2003-’04 academic year and the Bruins’ 93rd title overall. But the Bruins weren’t done yet.

As anyone who watched the 2004 Summer Olympic Games knows, there are an awful lot of events involved in outdoor track and field. There are the racing events, such as the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1,500m, 5,000m, 10,000m, 400m hurdles, steeplechase and relays. There are the throwing events — hammer, javelin, discus, shot put — and the jumping events, which include the long jump, high jump and triple jump. And of course, there’s the pole vault.

So when the UCLA women’s track and field team arrived at Texas’ Mike A. Myers Stadium for the 2004 NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, they knew what they had to do. And on June 12, the final day of competition, they did just that: They edged out defending champion Louisiana State University, 69-68, to win the national championship.

It was the UCLA women’s first outdoor championship since 1983, when Head Coach Jeanette Bolden ’85 was an All-American sprinter for the Bruins. UCLA had won indoor championships in 2000 and 2001, but this outdoor title was the first for Bolden as a head coach.

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